State pioneers society moving collection, offices to Presidio

Group for descendants relocating collection and offices to Presidio

The Society of California Pioneers, the most exclusive private organization in the West, is moving to a new home in the Presidio this summer.

The society's membership is limited to direct descendants of people who lived in California before 1850. There are about 1,200 members, according to Managing Director Mercedes Moore Devine, a descendant of Joseph Moore, who arrived in San Francisco in 1849.

The society's current headquarters, a five-story building at Fourth and Folsom streets in San Francisco's South of Market district, will be offered for rent.

"We were pioneers when we relocated to the South of Market area in 2000," said Patricia Keats, the society's librarian. Back then, she said, there weren't many office buildings in the neighborhood.

But now the society hopes to take advantage of the office boom in SoMa; the rent from the old headquarters would pay for the move to the Presidio.

The society's new home will be an old brick military barracks built in 1895 on what's called Infantry Row, facing the Presidio's main parade ground.

"It's a perfect site for us," Devine said. "The Presidio is ground zero for everything that's cultural and hip in the city."

The society will move its collection of art, photographs, historic documents and other artifacts to the Presidio this summer - tentatively set for July - and hopes to open its museum and library to the public in September.

The Society of California Pioneers is the oldest such organization in California and the West.

Though its requirements for membership are rigid - prospective members must offer proof that they are descended from a pioneer - at least one of its revered founders was a fraud.

The society was founded by six men who marched in a parade in August 1850 to honor the recently deceased U.S. President Zachary Taylor.

The six invited other pioneers to join them. One of the six founding members was Talbot Green, who had come to California in 1841, when the region belonged to Mexico.

Green was a prominent citizen of San Francisco, but he was not what he seemed.

When he marched in another parade in 1850, a woman recognized him: She said Green was really Paul Geddes, who was wanted in Pennsylvania for embezzlement. Not only that, she said, he was a bigamist, with a wife in California and another wife and children back East.

Green denied that he was the fugitive Geddes, and sailed to the East to clear his name. But it turned out he really was Geddes, and when he returned to San Francisco years later, his former friends refused to speak to him.

Green Street, which runs from North Beach to Cow Hollow, is named for him. The street was named for him when he was riding high, and stayed that way after he was discovered to be Geddes.